1366 × 768 screen resolution needed for win8

Soldato
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seems a bit silly to me.

rules out me using this on my netbook. from what i see there is loads of unused space.

does it really need 1366 × 768 screen resolution?

IIRC my netbook is 1024x768 (or possibly a 16:9 1024 resolution)
 
Associate
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You can still use it, but the ability to 'snap' apps to either side of the screen requires that higher resolution.

E.g. watching video while having a Twitter app open on the side.
 
Man of Honour
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You can still use it, but the ability to 'snap' apps to either side of the screen requires that higher resolution.

E.g. watching video while having a Twitter app open on the side.

You still need a minimum of 1024x768 for metro apps to launch.

Why do you think there's loads of wasted space?
New devices will have the required screen resolution.
Why support a small market, with a small screen resolution. That is very outdated.


http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/21/scaling-to-different-screens.aspx
I’ve seen a few blog comments that ask specifically about minimum resolution, for example on Designing the Start screen in October 2011, @wolf asked:




“A better idea would force all developers to make sure all Metro app [are designed for] a minimal screen size of 800x600. Limiting Metro apps to only 1024x768 will cut out all netbook users as well as hurt the Windows App Store."




We chose a minimum screen resolution of 1024x768 in order to make it as simple as possible for developers to create great apps that work on all the different screens that are available now and in the future. A minimum resolution provides a necessary starting place for developers, who can use it as a baseline to ensure that all of the navigation, controls, and content fit on screen. As we worked on different design layouts for apps, we found that the higher the minimum resolution, the richer and more tailored the app could be. We wanted developers to be able to tailor and refine their layouts to make use of every available pixel on 1024x768, without having to compromise the layout for a smaller resolution.


We chose 1024x768 as a minimum for Metro style apps for three reasons.

It is large enough to support the rich and beautiful layouts that we expect to see with Metro style apps. Lower resolutions, like 800x600 for example, require simpler more basic layouts with less content.
Websites are typically designed for 1024x768 as the minimum (or only) resolution, and web developers are used to targeting this resolution.
Looking at the data about devices in the marketplace today, we see that only 1.2% of active Windows 7 users have screens with a resolution of less than 1024x768. When designing a new platform that supports the devices of today and tomorrow (with undoubtedly higher resolutions) we optimized for the majority of today’s screens (i.e. 98.8%) without sacrificing the experience and complicating the developer story for legacy screens. In addition, the runrate of new PCs with screen sizes of 1024x600 and 1280x720 has dramatically fallen and, to the best of our knowledge, almost no new mainstream PCs are being manufactured with this resolution. We are aware of purpose-built machines that run at lower resolutions, which are built for specialized desktop apps as well. While many run virtual machines, VMs can easily support 1024x768 even though many default to lower resolution.


And the reason for snap screen size
The resolution that supports all the features of Windows 8, including multitasking with snap, is 1366x768. We chose this resolution as it has enough horizontal pixels to fit the 320px width of a snapped app, next to a main app with a 1024px width. The specs of the Samsung tablet that we unveiled at the //build/ conference are 11.6-inches with a 1366x768 resolution (the Samsung Series 7 tablet in market today). These specs are the minimum screen resolution that supports all the features of Windows 8 on a useful physical size.


The snap view is always a fixed 320px wide, which allows developers to refine and create a targeted view for this size. A width of 320px is a common and familiar size that developers are already designing for on various phone platforms.

Some people have asked why we don’t allow for the snap view to be arbitrarily sized, or offer a variety of different multitasking sizes. Supporting arbitrary sizes for this small of a layout can significantly increase the complexity of building an app, and would require a lot of additional work and complexity from the developer.

Although the width of a snapped app remains fixed, the vertical space increases to fit the screen, so on larger screens you won’t have to scroll as much. The //build/ talk 8 traits of great Metro style apps provides many great snapped layout examples. We will discuss snap and multitasking more in a future post.
 
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Soldato
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the thing is though Glaucus, loads of people have netbooks. almost everyone here has at least one for example.

thanks for the info though.

not that bothered with snap as to be honest my netbook only gets used for the odd bit of surfing and gets hooked up to my spare stereo in the consevatory for listening to music.

i fancied win8 as it is supposed to run better than win7 on the same h/w
 
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I've never had a netbook either.

You'd have to question whether old netbooks (presumably the new ones shipping with Win8 will have higher resolutions) really need to be running Win8.

Logically, if you release a new OS which is designed around a Modern UI, chances are you are going to want to exploit modern hardware.
 
Soldato
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The minimum specs still are; 1024x768 for metro style apps. They had to draw the line somewhere, its just unfortunate for a section of netbooks owners. But its a rapidly declining form factor anyway.
 
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I always thought netbooks were utterly useless anyway, awkward to type on, rubbish screen resolutions for browsing the internet (who wants to scroll that much?), and now being phased out by the latest OS.

Seems like a good move to me. Heck the lowest resolution laptop I have is 1440x900 anyway, and it's an old 13" Core 2 Duo Lenovo Thinkpad X300.
 
Soldato
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the thing is though Glaucus, loads of people have netbooks. almost everyone here has at least one for example.

thanks for the info though.

not that bothered with snap as to be honest my netbook only gets used for the odd bit of surfing and gets hooked up to my spare stereo in the consevatory for listening to music.

i fancied win8 as it is supposed to run better than win7 on the same h/w

I've never owned Netbook and I'm not planning on it!

Rubbish performance, rubbish screens, rubbish keyboards. I'd rather have a secondhand ThinkPad X-series.

As for Win 8 running better ... Win 7 isn't exactly slow.
 
Man of Honour
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That seems to be the antithesis of MSs approach for the last 20 years. They've always made their OS backwards compatible with old hardware. The minimum specs are usually completely unimpressive.

They haven't built a revolutionary Modern UI for a long time though. I'd also argue that 1024x768 is completely unimpressive.
 
Soldato
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That seems to be the antithesis of MSs approach for the last 20 years. They've always made their OS backwards compatible with old hardware. The minimum specs are usually completely unimpressive.

1GB of RAM and a 1GHz CPU are completely unimpressive, its the same requirements as 7, and O/S from 2009, based on an O/S from 2007. The only requirement that has changed is that 7's requirement for 800x600 or greater has changed to a requirement for 1024x768 or greater. Its just progress, and not fast progress at that as 800x600 hasnt been the dominant resolution since 2000 and 1024x768 hasn't since 2006.
 
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